From Foxsports
I hope this never happens. Fortunetly I don't think it will.
Jones calls for interchange
By Wayne Smith
October 17, 2003
BURIED away at the bottom of the match statistics sheet from last week's Australia-Argentina game was the entirely unremarkable category of "replacements".
The Wallabies, it transpired, used all seven of their reserves - some of them, admittedly, for no more than cameo appearances - while the Pumas made only two substitutions.
Nothing particularly startling or significant about those stats except that they highlighted Australian coach Eddie Jones' tendency to make maximum use of his bench, far more so than the likes of Argentina's Marcelo Loffreda or the All Blacks' John Mitchell.
It's all a bit limited, however, what a coach can do with his seven reserves. The only times a player who has been replaced is permitted to return to the game is in a blood-bin situation, when a substituted player is allowed to replace a team-mate with a bleeding or open wound, or to replace a front-rower injured, sin-binned or sent off.
Jones yesterday signalled his desire for rugby to go to the next level and introduce interchange, allowing players to be rotated for purely tactical reasons.
The International Rugby Board will hold a conference in January to consider possible changes to the game and Jones said: "I think that's something that's definitely worth investigating."
There will be those who will view his suggestion as further evidence of the insidious creeping influence of rugby league on the 15-a-side game. Jones, a keen student of both codes, would be well aware league permits a four-man bench and a maximum of 12 interchanges a game, a sensible step back from the days of unlimited interchanges.
No doubt Jones' proposal will be seen by some as at least a partial way out of his current bind of having to run his first-choice side into form while simultaneously needing to give his second XV as much game time as possible in case the Wallabies are swamped by injuries later in the tournament. If, for instance, Jones knew he could give George Gregan a breather mid-game but be able to re-introduce him, it would allow him to be far more generous in the game time he allocates to reserve halfback Chris Whitaker.
In fact, for all the cynical spins that could be put on Jones' motives for raising the interchange issue, the fairest interpretation is that he has recognised the game is approaching terminal velocity in its present format and is looking for ways of packing more football into the allocated 80 minutes.
But, as he warned, a law change as fundamental as the one he is hinting at could have all kinds of unintended consequences.
There is no denying the introduction of the interchange bench has made rugby league a faster game. The question is whether faster implies better.
As my teenage son reminds me every time I raise my hand for a breather after an extended point in our weekly tennis battles, fatiguing your opponent is all part of the game. An interchange rule, however, takes the exhaustion factor out of the game, or at least diminishes it.
It is when the big men start to tire that rugby's smaller players come more into their own, which explains why Gregan tends to do most of his running late in proceedings. If the big men are able to be rotated when they start getting lead in their legs, the Gregans and Matt Giteaus of the game will find themselves getting monstered whenever they attempt one of their darting runs through the tall timber.
Rugby's great appeal has always been that any player, if he is good enough, can play Test rugby - no matter what his body shape. Every height-challenged rugby player, for instance, has as his patron saint Colin Patterson, the jockey-sized Irish halfback who tormented such Wallaby greats as Mark Loane and Tony Shaw with his mosquito-like raids in the 1979 series.
An interchange rule would make it harder for smaller players like Patterson to survive. Already the trend is to bigger halfbacks, like South Africa's 188cm Joost Van der Westhuizen and France's 180cm captain Fabien Galthie.
Another potential downside is that rugby could be detoured down the path American football has taken of over-specialisation. Where rugby players are required to be able to both attack and defend, and can find themselves switching from one role to the other in the blink of an eye or the snaffling of a ball at the breakdown, American football has developed offensive and defensive specialists.
If a rugby team is narrowly in front approaching the business end of an important match, what's to stop a coach with an interchange bench at his disposal from replacing all his suspect defenders with crash-tackling Matt Cockbain types?
The interchange could, as well, become a means of shielding the quarterbacks of the game - the Steve Larkhams, Carlos Spencers and Jonny Wilkinsons - from the traditional softening-up period at the start of Test matches.
Hysterical worst case scenarios, however, shouldn't be used to shoot down constructive ideas. Rugby is constantly evolving and it may be that an interchange rule is an idea whose time has come. Certainly the time has come to explore it.
I hope this never happens. Fortunetly I don't think it will.
Jones calls for interchange
By Wayne Smith
October 17, 2003
BURIED away at the bottom of the match statistics sheet from last week's Australia-Argentina game was the entirely unremarkable category of "replacements".
The Wallabies, it transpired, used all seven of their reserves - some of them, admittedly, for no more than cameo appearances - while the Pumas made only two substitutions.
Nothing particularly startling or significant about those stats except that they highlighted Australian coach Eddie Jones' tendency to make maximum use of his bench, far more so than the likes of Argentina's Marcelo Loffreda or the All Blacks' John Mitchell.
It's all a bit limited, however, what a coach can do with his seven reserves. The only times a player who has been replaced is permitted to return to the game is in a blood-bin situation, when a substituted player is allowed to replace a team-mate with a bleeding or open wound, or to replace a front-rower injured, sin-binned or sent off.
Jones yesterday signalled his desire for rugby to go to the next level and introduce interchange, allowing players to be rotated for purely tactical reasons.
The International Rugby Board will hold a conference in January to consider possible changes to the game and Jones said: "I think that's something that's definitely worth investigating."
There will be those who will view his suggestion as further evidence of the insidious creeping influence of rugby league on the 15-a-side game. Jones, a keen student of both codes, would be well aware league permits a four-man bench and a maximum of 12 interchanges a game, a sensible step back from the days of unlimited interchanges.
No doubt Jones' proposal will be seen by some as at least a partial way out of his current bind of having to run his first-choice side into form while simultaneously needing to give his second XV as much game time as possible in case the Wallabies are swamped by injuries later in the tournament. If, for instance, Jones knew he could give George Gregan a breather mid-game but be able to re-introduce him, it would allow him to be far more generous in the game time he allocates to reserve halfback Chris Whitaker.
In fact, for all the cynical spins that could be put on Jones' motives for raising the interchange issue, the fairest interpretation is that he has recognised the game is approaching terminal velocity in its present format and is looking for ways of packing more football into the allocated 80 minutes.
But, as he warned, a law change as fundamental as the one he is hinting at could have all kinds of unintended consequences.
There is no denying the introduction of the interchange bench has made rugby league a faster game. The question is whether faster implies better.
As my teenage son reminds me every time I raise my hand for a breather after an extended point in our weekly tennis battles, fatiguing your opponent is all part of the game. An interchange rule, however, takes the exhaustion factor out of the game, or at least diminishes it.
It is when the big men start to tire that rugby's smaller players come more into their own, which explains why Gregan tends to do most of his running late in proceedings. If the big men are able to be rotated when they start getting lead in their legs, the Gregans and Matt Giteaus of the game will find themselves getting monstered whenever they attempt one of their darting runs through the tall timber.
Rugby's great appeal has always been that any player, if he is good enough, can play Test rugby - no matter what his body shape. Every height-challenged rugby player, for instance, has as his patron saint Colin Patterson, the jockey-sized Irish halfback who tormented such Wallaby greats as Mark Loane and Tony Shaw with his mosquito-like raids in the 1979 series.
An interchange rule would make it harder for smaller players like Patterson to survive. Already the trend is to bigger halfbacks, like South Africa's 188cm Joost Van der Westhuizen and France's 180cm captain Fabien Galthie.
Another potential downside is that rugby could be detoured down the path American football has taken of over-specialisation. Where rugby players are required to be able to both attack and defend, and can find themselves switching from one role to the other in the blink of an eye or the snaffling of a ball at the breakdown, American football has developed offensive and defensive specialists.
If a rugby team is narrowly in front approaching the business end of an important match, what's to stop a coach with an interchange bench at his disposal from replacing all his suspect defenders with crash-tackling Matt Cockbain types?
The interchange could, as well, become a means of shielding the quarterbacks of the game - the Steve Larkhams, Carlos Spencers and Jonny Wilkinsons - from the traditional softening-up period at the start of Test matches.
Hysterical worst case scenarios, however, shouldn't be used to shoot down constructive ideas. Rugby is constantly evolving and it may be that an interchange rule is an idea whose time has come. Certainly the time has come to explore it.
